Addressing threats to health care's core values, especially those stemming from concentration and abuse of power. Advocating for accountability, integrity, transparency, honesty and ethics in leadership and governance of health care.

Wednesday, August 07, 2013

Health Care Revolving Door Roundup

Increasingly, the regulatory and law enforcement functions of the US government in the health care sphere seem to be blending with the management of large health care organizations. One mechanism for this is the "revolving door," the constant interchange of personnel between government agencies and corporate management.

Here is a list of some of this year's interesting cases of people transiting the revolving door between US government agencies that are supposed to regulate health care organizations or enforce the relevant laws and the organizations subject to these regulations and laws. Note that this list may not be complete. It is difficult to keep track of these transitions.

John Pease, who led the government and health care fraud section in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia, has left the Justice Department for a job with a pharmaceutical company.

Pease, 45, is a new senior counsel at Teva Pharmaceuticals, where he oversees government investigations of the company for the Americas. 'I was just ready to try something different,' Pease said in an interview.

Leader of US Department of Justice Fraud Section in Charge of Health Care Issues to Law Firm as Defender of Companies and Senior Executives

Sam Sheldon is head of the firm’s Health Care Practice Group. He is a
trial lawyer who represents companies and senior executives in
litigation before the United States federal government including
Department of Justice and Department of Health and Human Services, and
other law enforcement and regulatory agencies.

Generic
drugmaker Mylan Inc said on Tuesday it hired Deborah Autor, deputy
commissioner for global regulatory operations and policy at the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration, to help oversee its global regulatory
strategy.

Leader of Health Care Fraud Enforcement of Philadelphia US Attorney's Office to Law Firm as Industry Defender

May was the head of healthcare fraud enforcement in the
U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
She coordinated healthcare fraud cases and investigations as
well as handled False Claims Act cases involving pharmaceutical
and medical device companies, hospitals, nursing homes and other
healthcare providers, the firm said.

In each of these cases, a person with responsibility for regulation of and/or law enforcement for health care organizations went through the revolving door to either work for health care corporations subject to such regulation and/or law enforcement, or work for legal firms that specialize in defending such corporations and their leaders in regulatory and law enforcement actions.

As far as I know, none of these instances was the least bit illegal. However, like previous examples of the revolving door, they raise the concern that people in government regulation or law enforcement who think that they may have future lucrative job prospects helping health care organizations attenuate regulation and law enforcement may not be the most enthusiastic, aggressive, or persistent regulators or law enforcers. Why would one want to upset one's future employer?

While these cases of the revolving door are legal, they are clearly conflicts of interest in the sense that the prospect of such future employment likely may increase the risk of compromising a government official's devotion to serving the public and enforcing the law, if not in the legal sense. In some particular case, the revolving door may actually lead to corruption according to the Transparency International definition, abuse of entrusted power for private gain, if not according to the legal definition. Thus the continuing occurrence of government officials blithely transiting the revolving door no doubt was a reason that more than 40% of the public consider the US health care sector to be corrupt (see this post.)

True health care reform would require curtailing the severe sorts of conflicts of interest created by the revolving door. This might require both improving pay and working conditions for government regulators and law enforcers, and specific laws to prevent immediate transitions from being a regulator/ law enforcer to handling corporate responses to or defenses of such regulation and enforcement.

Of course, I can already hear the protests of those people who decry paying more for government or increasing government regulation. I can at least hope that the protests are not from those who personally profit from the current seemingly corrupt system.

I hope mr pease continues to value justice and integrity in his new role ,in the same admirable and tenacious way he did as a public servant. Time will indeed tell. To Afraid , every individual, unlike animals, operates from choice,not instinct. If to choose integrity is the chosen path he will probably feel like he stands alone.He is not.

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